Can We Take A Moment To Think About The Younger Trans Men And Mascs On Tumblr Right Now?

don’t kill yourself because the internet is going to be really funny when Elon gets assassinated

The world is a better place with trans men in it. So never apologize for being one.

Don’t let this stupid discourse prevent you from transitioning! Don’t let people dedicated to misunderstanding you have any impact on how you live your life!

Yes, there will be assholes. I know it hurts more when the people who should support you are the ones attacking you- trust me, I’ve been there.

But at the end of the day, they’re not the ones living your life. They don’t know what’s best for you- you do.

It’s all up to you to decide; what being a man means to you, your relationship with masculinity, and what you want out of your transition.

There’s no wrong answer except for the one others try to force on you.

I can’t wait to see who you become!

"Men in dresses are seen as bad, but women in pants aren't!"

is not the statement that "men can't be feminine but women can be masculine in society" that you think it is.

Let me introduce: women with facial hair. Full beards. Mustaches. Bald women. Bodybuilder women. Women with visible body hair. These aren't "more acceptable" than men in dresses.

Pants don't have a gendered association anymore, while dresses do. There is something to be said for that, but it certainly ISN'T "masculine women are acceptable now."

sorry but youll never catch me feeling bad abt my masculinity as a black trans man becuz some popular tumblrite said it was cringe

So much pointless LGBT+ discourse could be avoided if people just stopped assuming they knew everything about the oppression OTHER identities face.

For example, if you’re nonbinary, you can absolutely talk about the struggles you’ve dealt with as a nonbinary person, and speak of the issues your community is dealing with. But if you’re not transfem, it’s not your place to comment on how transfem issues compare to your own.

And if you’re a trans woman, you should absolutely not be talking about how trans men “have it easier” or what transitioning is like for them, because you fundamentally don’t know! You’re not a trans man!

And it goes both ways- trans men shouldn’t speak on trans women’s issues! Binary trans people shouldn’t claim to know what it’s like to be nonbinary!

It even hearkens back to older varieties of discourse, like ace discourse. You saw non-ace people talking about what THEY thought being ace was like, because they believed that being LGBT+ themselves made them the arbiters of oppression.

Or hell, gay men claiming that lesbians had it sooo easy compared to what they went through! Like, man, how the hell would you know, you're not a lesbian!

Just. Stop! Stop talking about the assumed experiences of other people! Being one flavor of queer doesn’t mean you’re the expert on ALL queer oppression! LISTEN to other people, stop talking over them!

I think if people accepted this, 90% of stupid online identity discourse would vanish overnight.

do y'all remember when they found all that tf art in Osamu Tezuka's drawer post-mortem because I think about it often

anyway keep chasing your bliss and draw weird shit, god knows we need that right now

I’m hoping that this is as “angry” as I’ll get with a comic, but given how the world is shaping up politically at the moment, I fear that might not be the case.

It’s been incredibly eye opening to witness the degree to which some people I know are willing to bury their heads in the sand in order to avoid the reality of the awful things that are happening around them.  Awful things that they were told were going to happen.

In America, people are being black bagged and shipped off to El Salvador without due process to be held indefinitely in prisons, with the current administration now making social media posts cruelly boasting that they’ll never return. 

Make no mistake, if people are being kidnapped by the government, given no due process, and are shipped to a foreign nation to be held in prison with no intention to give them any legal recourse, we need to call these prisons what they are:

They are death camps.

The United States of America is rounding up “undesirables” and sending them to death camps. 

There are people in this country that voted for this.  No matter how nice they otherwise seem or claim to be, these people are evil to the core. 

There are also people who didn’t vote for this, but do provide social validation and acceptance to those who did.

If you are someone who thinks you’re against fascism, but you also accept fascists in your life, you are a fascist. 

There can be no acceptance of intolerance.  In the comic, the person I’m lampooning is the “Fake Trans Ally”, but you can swap out “trans” for any other group of marginalized people.  Frankly, just call this person “The Fake Ally.”

If you’re someone reading this and feel attacked because I’m calling you a fake ally, it’s time to do some soul searching.  When the history books are written about this period of American history, are you going to be someone who was unambiguously against hatred, or were you someone that treated hate as acceptable? 

Were you someone that invited hatred into your home?

Were you someone that shared a meal with hatred?

Were you someone that allowed hatred a safe haven?

If you’re someone that does that, you yourself are hateful. 

When you accept hate, you do so at the expense of those who are the target of that hatred.

Be better, our lives depend on it.

if your primary source of information on transmascs is by anyone else but a transmasc, it's not a reliable resource. it's currently viewed as perfectly okay for everyone BUT transmascs to talk about our experience- and in fact, it's encouraged for people to listen to everyone but us, because according to other people we're unreliable narrators, we "skew the truth," we "lie", that transmascs "already have too much space and too many people talking about transmasc issues", and that testosterone turns us into "irrational monsters".

i get it: people's internalized misogyny makes them treat us like we're too stupid to relay our own lived experiences because we're just "dumb, confused women." we get it- your misogyny is palpable. it morphs into a new, heinous experience- transandrophobia- once people begin telling us testosterone makes us evil, antimasculism begins to bleed into the misogyny that built this experience and turns it into something even more insideous.

people will do everything in their power to listen to everyone else talk about our experience, but when it comes to us advocating for ourselves, that's not allowed. everyone wants to speak for us, to tell us what their perception on transmasculinity is based off of a few passing experiences with transmascs so they "know what it's all about".

please seek out transmasculine people to listen to about our lived experience. everyone who attempts to speak for us has an agenda. don't listen to anyone but the source. outside speculation has no place when it comes to discussing the transmasculine experience, especially when it comes to saving young transmascs from feeling lost and totally alone

no one can tell our stories but us. stop being okay with people who aren't transmasc spreading lies about what we live through. our experiences need to be heard. let us speak for ourselves. stop putting words in our mouths and telling US how we live our lives

Queer 👏 people 👏 are 👏 not 👏 all 👏 fucking 👏 activists 👏

Stop quizzing us on queer history and asking us questions we aren’t qualified to answer about the world and about politics and about our identities

Stop trying to back us into a corner so you can justify your discrimination on the basis that we don’t know what we’re talking about or can’t “defend” ourselves to you

Stop treating every queer person that stands up and says “I want to be treated like a person” as if they’re an activist

Cut that bullshit out

Marginalised people just want to exist and be happy

I don’t know everything, and that doesn’t make me undeserving of your respect or my human rights you fucker

I don’t even owe you the stuff I do know- I still am entitled to basic fucking respect

TLDR; Queer people shouldn’t have to be historians or scientists for you to not be a fucking dick

My favorite thing is assigning privilege to people who don't have it so that I feel better about my own oppression. yessir nothing better than that